tell tales

Tell-tale

A tell-tale is a reference indicator or a sign that clearly signals that something else is true or is about to happen.

Sailing

In a nautical or sailing context a tell-tale is a piece of cloth or fabric that is tied or attached to a stay, one of several wires, that holds a mast in place on a sailboat. Usually there will be one tell-tale on the port stay and one on a starboard stay.

Tell-tales can also be attached to a sail, used as a guide when trimming (adjusting) a sail. On the mainsail tell-tales are on the leech (aft edge) and when trimmed properly should be streaming backwards. On the jib there are tell-tales on both sides of the luff of the sail. As a general guide, the windward tell-tale should stream aft (backwards) with an occasional lift, the leeward front tell-tale should stream aft.

Space

The Phoenix spacecraft contains a tell-tale, developed by the University of Aarhus in Denmark, as part of its Meteorological Station. It is a small tube that will be deflected by the martian wind. The science payload’s stereo camera will record images of the tell-tale that will be used to determine wind direction and speed.

Railroad

A tell-tale is also a series of ropes suspended over the tracks above the height of a boxcar. These ropes are intended to give warning to a brakeman on the roof of the train that the train is approaching a low-clearance obstacle, such as a tunnel or a bridge. A Chesapeake and Ohio Railway tell-tale had 17 of these ropes hanging from a tube suspended across the track, the bottom of the ropes 12" lower than the height of the obstruction, and placed 100 to 300 feet before the obstruction.

Linguistics

In linguistics a tell-tale is a string of characters that occurs only within one language within a group of languages. A reader can be completely certain which language they are reading if he or she comes across a tell-tale. In this sense, a tell tale is a dead give away of what the language is.